Tuesday, September 23, 2014

The AFL’s Brownlow Medal: The Problems of 3-2-1

Over the past
day I have seen a lot of comments basically saying that the voting system for
the Brownlow Medal is not a good way of picking the ‘best’ player in the AFL
(yes, I know it is technically ‘best and fairest’ in the AFL … ) The voting
system has bothered me a little bit over the years, but it was only tonight
that I tried to think through exactly what its problems were.In the Brownlow
Medal voting system, umpires award three votes to the best player for the
match, two votes for the second best player, and one vote for the third best
player. By contrast, in many leagues around the world, the voting for the ‘best’
or ‘most valuable’ player often takes place through an end-of-season vote in
which players receive votes for their performances over the season as a whole. Compared
to this system, there are a few main problems that the Brownlow Medal system
has in determining in the best player for the season. These problems exist independently of who is doing
the voting, whether it be umpires, coaches, players, or the media.The first
problem is that only three players
are awarded with votes for each match. Hence, no distinctions are made between
any players from the fourth best player through to the forty fourth best
player. An end-of-season vote, on the other hand, would in theory make these
distinctions.The second
problem is that three players have to be
awarded votes for each match. The saying that it is easier to get votes on bad
teams has sounded to me like a cliché, particularly since voting
has shifted towards winning teams in recent years. But putting these voting
biases aside it is actually true, even if its effect is often exaggerated. For
a player of given ability playing against a given opposition, the player’s
chances of getting votes will be better the worse his teammates are, given that
three players have to get votes. Again, this should not theoretically be true
in the end-of-season vote model.The third
problem is that players can only receive three votes, two votes, one vote, or
no votes. Therefore, regardless of how much better the best player was than the
second best player he will only receive one more vote (and the best player in
each match, regardless of how good they were, will receive the same number of
votes).There are
two potential advantages of the Brownlow Medal voting system, but they have to
do with how the voting is done, rather than the 3-2-1 voting system. The first
is that, by doing the voting immediately following the match, it increases the
chance that the voting is a fairer reflection of how the player actually
performed at the match, rather than being affected by imperfect recollections.
The second is that the voting is done by people who were actually at the match.
In an end-of-season vote it is often the case that voters will not have seen
all of a player’s performances.Putting all
these points together a better system would be this, although it would be
obviously time-consuming and unlikely to happen. Each week ‘knowledgeable
observers’ (whoever they might be) could watch each match, and rate every
player. This would keep the advantages of immediacy, and having voters who have
actually watched the matches, while avoiding the flaws of the 3-2-1 system. On
the other hand, having the AFL boss read out forty four votes for each match
probably would not make for riveting television.